Conductive filament sources?

Having broken in my FFCP pretty well (er, aside from the occasional small glitch), I’m now looking into one of my major interests in 3D printing: conductive filament.So far, I’ve found three kinds of conductive filament:1) Proto-Plant’s conductive filament, which is based on graphite. I actually bought a spool of this, before learning of its resistivity, which is on the order of 1.8 kΩ per centimeter. It’s like printing with a string of resistors… It may still be workable if I print really fat tubes (like a 10-gauge wire), but even then it’s still way too high for normal use.2) Several other sources have conductive filament that’s a combination of PLA and graphene. Much better resistivity, but… er… isn’t graphene, like, kind of dangerous? Even more so if you heat it and extrude it in small doses, which tends to aerosolize it? I’ve already experienced enough ABS fumes that I’m now running a HEPA filter right next to the FFCP, and that’s for ABS, which has no appreciable (or, at least, recognized) health risks. Graphene… I dunno. Seems like a bad idea.3) Specialty printers that can lay down rows of conductive ink in conjunction with printed matter, and of course the printers run in the range of $4k.Can anyone comment, or suggest an alternative source? http://ift.tt/2aLoSF7

Leave a Reply